Coming ahead of a likely visit by President Xi Jinping—and amid continuing efforts to stabilise India-China relations after years of border tensions—the timing is difficult to ignore. Taken together, these developments suggest that the diplomatic calendar is indeed becoming consequential.
The forthcoming SCO and BRICS summits offer platforms where countries that may disagree sharply on major geopolitical questions can still meet, talk, test possibilities and build consensus. In a fragmented international system, simply keeping these channels open matters.
For India, this is a particularly important. New Delhi has consistently pursued strategic autonomy maintaining strong ties with Washington and Moscow while simultaneously managing a difficult but important relationship with Beijing. And across the Global South, countries are asserting greater agency in shaping a more diverse and genuinely multipolar international order.
Amid this change, the willingness to talk creates space for de-escalation and greater understanding. Dialogue creates possibilities that confrontation cannot. A season of deliberative diplomacy, it seems, has arrived.